Mr. Recordon goes to Washington: Portland native named Director of IT for the White House

File under “We knew him when…” It’s always nice when someone from the Portland tech scene makes a splash on a bigger stage. And this time, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Former Portlander David Recordon—known to many of us by his online moniker daveman692—has been named the Director of IT for the White House.

Noting David’s appointment, President Obama said, “In our continued efforts to serve our citizens better, we’re bringing in top tech leaders to support our teams across the federal government. Today, I’m pleased to welcome David Recordon as the Director of White House Information Technology. His considerable private sector experience and ability to deploy the latest collaborative and communication technologies will be a great asset to our work on behalf of the American people.”

As Director of White House Information Technology, David will build on the Administration’s Smarter IT Delivery efforts to ensure that the technology utilized by the White House is efficient, effective, and secure. This includes converging overlapping systems, modernizing software used to collaborate, and bringing use of new technologies in line with private sector best practices. This work will both benefit the operations of the White House and also help pave the way for improvements across the Federal government.

Born in Portland, David attended Catlin Gabel here in town before an internship with LiveJournal—founded by fellow long-time Oregonian Brad Fitzpatrick—led to his growing involvement with the world of open source and OpenID in particular. In 2007, he was honored with the Google-O’Reilly Open Source Award, the youngest recipient to achieve that honor. Dave remained with LiveJournal after they were acquired by SixApart, leaving in 2009 to join the Facebook team.

Congrats to Dave on this new gig. Honestly, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer or more genius of a guy.

For more information, read the post on the White House blog.

(Hat tip Renny Gleeson)

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy